Geneticists Discover a Way to Extend Lifespans to 800 Years!

Geneticists Discover a Way to Extend Lifespans to 800 Years!

Before you read the story on this amazing breakthrough here are our thoughts on the subject.

If people still lived to be nigh-1000 years old, the world would overpopulate very quickly; instead of growing old to be 80 and then dying, there’d be fifty generations of a single family living at the same time. The world population of 7,000,000,000 would probably increase exponentially, because people would still be starting new families, but no one would be dying of old age.

How would it affect the economy? Would money decrease in value if they had to make enough for so many people in effort to keep as little poverty as possible? How long would food last? Would we use it on cattle and pigs and chickens and other farm animals? What about fruits and vegetables? Where would everyone live? Would the entire planet turn into one huge city? Where would we grow our food? Would we just build up and up and up for housing developments? How many houses and cars would be made? With that many houses and cars being used, what would happen to our atmosphere? How long until resources, such as trees and metal run out since they’d be used so quickly? Would the ability to grow old prevent us from taking in other forms of health deficiences? Would it be 70 years of life and 730 years of being diseased and bedridden?

In my opinion, living that long with as many people in the world as there are now could only cause problems. #IZM

Now check out the story below…

There is now a way to extend the lifespan of organisms so that humans could conceivably live to be 800 years old. In an amazing development, scientists at the University of Southern California have announced that they’ve extended the lifespan of yeast bacteria tenfold — and the recipe they used to do it might easily translate into humans. It involves tinkering with two genes, and cutting down your calorie intake. Tests have already started on people in Ecuador.

According to an announcement from PLoS Genetics:

Researchers have created baker’s yeast capable of living to 800 in yeast years without apparent side effects. The basic but important discovery, achieved through a combination of dietary and genetic changes, brings scientists closer to controlling the survival and health of the unit of all living systems: the cell. “We’re setting the foundation for reprogramming healthy life,” says study leader Valter Longo of the University of Southern California.

Longo’s group put baker’s yeast on a calorie-restricted diet and knocked out two genes – RAS2 and SCH9 – that promote aging in yeast and cancer in humans.

“We got a 10-fold life span extension that is, I think, the longest one that has ever been achieved in any organism,” Longo says. Normal yeast organisms live about a week.

“I would say 10-fold is pretty significant,” says Anna McCormick, chief of the genetics and cell biology branch at the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and Longo’s program officer. The NIA funds such research in the hope of extending healthy life span in humans through the development of drugs that mimic the life-prolonging techniques used by Longo and others, McCormick adds.

Baker’s yeast is one of the most studied and best understood organisms at the molecular and genetic level. Remarkably, in light of its simplicity, yeast has led to the discovery of some of the most important genes and pathways regulating aging and disease in mice and other mammals.

Longo’s group next plans to further investigate life span extension in mice. The group is already studying a human population in Ecuador with mutations analogous to those described in yeast.

“People with two copies of the mutations have very small stature and other defects,” Longo says. “We are now identifying the relatives with only one copy of the mutation, who are apparently normal. We hope that they will show a reduced incidence of diseases and an extended life span.”

Longo cautions that, as in the Ecuador case, longevity mutations tend to come with severe growth deficits and other health problems. Finding drugs to extend the human life span without side effects will not be easy.

I’ve always been a skeptic when it comes to life-extending research, but this has me rethinking my position.CONTINUE READING